A Melbourne doctor who helped parents to avoid compulsory vaccinations for their children has agreed to stop practising medicine while health regulators investigate him.

On Thursday the Medical Board of Australia and the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency said Dr John Piesse had provided them with an undertaking not to take on any medical role or give any health or medical advice, even for free.

“I am a doctor who has been working hard for 18 months to try and help parents get exemption from ‘vaccinated pain for vaccinated play’, with mixed success,” he says in the video.

Piesse, a supporter of alternative medicine, is listed on the National Institute of Integrative Medicine website as a doctor who specialises in complementary therapies. The listing says he administers chelation therapy, which has valid use in some cases of heavy metal poisoning but is often promoted by alternative medicine practitioners as being able to treat other conditions including autism and heart disease.

Piesse once told a wellness website that he injects his patients with vitamins before and after surgery, and to treat chronic conditions, despite there being no evidence that doing so is effective.

Concerns about Piesse were raised as far back as 2001, and in July 2003, a professional review committee found Piesse’s conduct “caused a significant threat to the life or health of his patients”.

“It was concerned that Dr Piesse failed to make appropriate investigations of patient symptoms of possibly serious conditions such as cancer, meningitis, depression and anaemia,” the committee’s report said.

In August 2004 Piesse was reprimanded, counselled and ordered to repay Medicare benefits totalling $18,179. He was disqualified for 18 months from providing certain GP services to patients.

Since finding out about the latest investigation against him, anti-vaccination groups have launched a fundraiser to “support Piesse during a time of financial pressure, but also to use those funds to help with his research on the history of unvaccinated children in his practice”. The campaign has raised more than $90,000.